


Stamps

by Hasty (UniformedServiceman)



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Addiction, Gen, Heroin, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 18:51:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9916274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniformedServiceman/pseuds/Hasty
Summary: Judy Hopps is a heroin user. How she got there isn't important. The question is if she can stop, or why she would bother.





	

\---

“…urgently needed in the office yesterday, Hopps, and you did not show. Absence without leave is a disgrace to the department….”

\---

so,

things had changed, after all. Judy tossed her coat on the hook and sat on the floor to untie her shoes, working through the laces as she took some breaths to force out the winter air. She pushed the shoes away and plodded past the bed and bath to the big room, one of those cheesy “open plan” spaces that opened to a small kitchen on the left, a living room on the right, and a long, tall birch-colored wall running behind both, opposite the main door, which made the whole place seem like a trench torn from the ground and thrust in the sky. Before the place seemed big. Now it seemed so big you couldn’t leave if you wanted to.

Judy hopped into the armchair and curled against the side that wasn’t worn away. The apartment was built with somebody bigger than Judy in mind (pig- or wolf-sized, it seemed like), but she stayed on anyway. She had her reasons: it was a decent neighborhood, rent was cheap, memories, unable to stop the spiraling train of thought, angry at herself and bored Judy pulled her phone out of her pocket, picked a relaxed playlist and cranked the tiny speaker. Tonight wasn’t the night. She had limited herself to one night a week, Thursdays, so she still had one day to go. Some weeks were longer than others

She stared at the floor, and took sideways glances at everything else. Been there only three years, but things had changed. The floor used to be clear, but there were now over a dozen pillows scattered on the carpet, next to piles of blankets reeking of sweat. She’d found a new couch and dragged it off the street, since the old one was gone. It was a floral print disaster, but it was comfortable and matched the walls, so it stayed. Carpet hadn’t seen a vacuum in ages. A picture of a sailboat hung on the other wall, the matte as big as the picture itself, both blurry from where she sat. She sold the television a while ago -- not that she was desperate, rather, she never used it, it just took up space since she lived alone again. Its old stand, a white wooden thing, had a leg missing in back, so she just stacked books to keep it upright. It didn’t hold anything now, but Judy didn’t have any plans with it so it stayed, empty, set against the wall. The lamp used to be by the couch and coffee table but she had put it in the corner. She didn’t like it so bright now. The place should be dark, anyway. The whole spread was a mess, an ice sheet, melting, fractured, crusting along a lake not pretty enough to remember.

Except the window. Judy liked the window, a big bay doublepane that she never bothered buying blinds for. It had a great view of the skyline, which didn’t seem like her city, instead a picture of a better one, orderly and quiet. She kept the glass clean.

She’d made the couch her bed. “It’s cold in the bedroom in winter.” So she stayed out here, where it was warm, just the right size, and she could see the lights through the window when she laid down her head.

(none of that mattered. the problem was elsewhere. on the couch there were no bad dreams.)

\---

Buying needles could never be easy for Judy Hopps. She started with a phony story that her brother had diabetes, written down on a napkin during her lunch break, trying to keep it simple. Then she went home, and went too far, rehearsed in the mirror and wrote down notes until it became an entire scene in the classical dramatic form. She entered, at 10:17 AM, from the bandage aisle, following her blocking. She could feel the lights on her, making her fur shine against the tile, coaxing the words up to the surface of her skin, and she breathed out the act, scraped the smile off her teeth until she’d reached bone, hollowed out the character and made them open from every angle of observation.

 She didn’t check for their reaction until the monologue had run its course, and the shine on her body had faded to a dull glimmer, ready for a picture. The pharmacist’s jaw had cracked their face into a crooked smile that showed the strain of a good minute’s wear. A low-pitched mutter, “sure,” and they plopped a box of syringes on the counter. She tried to cover teary sighs by crinkling the bills when she handed over the money.

Those lasted a while. Two months later, she found herself down to three, and her online order hadn’t come in yet. The nearest other competing pharmacy was both a bus ride away and more expensive. She had to go back. She tried to make it someone other than herself, just a loser in a grey hoodie and torn jeans, no story, who walks straight to the pharmacy counter and asks for “a ten-pack of syringes, 1cc, 28g, with ½’’ tip”, no subtlety, no please, no Judy.

The counter was too tall for her to keep her head down. She looked up to see the same boar as last time.

“How’s your brother?”

She coughed, slid the money on her tiptoes, and left as quickly as possible.

\----

The kitchen was brown. The floor and cabinets were the same maple color, and through stacked rubbish and dirty plates, the pale brown pallor of the counter shone though, bled into the oven and sink, brought it together. Judy picked up some plastic wrap from the floor and pressed it into the trash. She started on her usual mealtime routine, fumbling through the cabinet and cooking the first can or box of something her paw fell on. She cracked the door and stuck her arm through, waved it around along the particle board in wide sweeps. After a long two seconds, her fingertips brushed against a box in the back. She didn’t feel anything else in there. Judy drowned out what that meant with her haste, stretching to snatch and whip the box onto the counter and dredging the sink for a pan, each move of her arm like a flip-knife lashing out, then locking into place until the rest of her body caught up and she flipped off the safety, freeing the arm to dart out again.

The speed was thrilling, initially. Something she had not felt by herself in some time. She poured the standing water down the drain and ran the bottom of the pan over with a cloth. After a few passes, the brown was gone, and she hosed it down one last time before filling it with water and lighting up the stove. The heat caused the burner to crackle, burning old grease and covering the must with the smell of sesame. The sun was setting, but Judy didn’t think she needed the light to work. She wiped down the plates by the bright blue gleam of the burner and the dim grey wash of twilight, each coming from a separate side, catching her between them and giving the curious quality of being dark, but having few shadows. After the first sinkful of dishes, her pace slowed, she started seeing what she was doing, thinking about things. She was cleaning up her messes, keeping things in order, on some level anyway, clearing things up so she’d be ready. It was a great feeling. “I have done something today.” (She tried not to look at the product of her labor, or consider what else needing doing, lament what she’d forgotten and what she couldn’t forget. The light made it hard, it kept everything in dark relief, froze things into statues.) She suddenly heard the water hissing on the stove, and turned around to pour the box of rice and bullion in. She checked the silverware caddy for a spoon.

It was empty. She laughed at her own naiveté, then walked over to the coffee table and pulled out the thin drawer running under the middle. There were a couple in there, all “used”; she chose the one that looked the nicest and walked back over to the pan. She turned around to look out to the sky, and stirred, absentmindedly, until the dish thickened, and the spoon got hot. Time to eat. She cut heat, waited until the pan was cool, then brought it out to the couch. She ate without looking at it once, staring at her feet, thinking about grabbing some water but not following through.

\---       

Judy woke up to her ringtone. It was day, sometime. Tuesday? The phone confirmed. February now, too. Today was going to be full of surprises.

 The phone’s screen was cracked. She could only see the first letter of the name on the caller ID, but she didn’t need any more.

_N---._

She let the answering machine take it, and brought the blankets down to the waist as she shook [herself] awake. He called again, but must have thought better of it, because the phone only rang twice. She waited a few more minutes, so she wouldn’t miss anything; when the phone stayed silent, the danger had passed, and set about getting herself dressed.

\----

A sweater had fallen in the hinge break of the front hall closet door, keeping its twin halves splayed out, not quite shut. Judy ambled out of the bathroom, rounded the corner and slinked through the gap the door left, scratching at her arms through her sleeves. After kicking aside some shoes, she hopped on a box, and rustled through the hangers for a thick top. “Spring shouldn’t be this cold.” The hallway was too far from the windows; all the light came from a bare bulb that poured a nasty fake orange, the type used in marketing, on everything it reached. The break in the door let it pierce into the closet, and Judy shuffled the clothes past that ray to see.

Out of space. Judy pushed all the clothes she’d seen behind her and hopped off the box. The jump combined with the dark spiked her nausea, and she leaned against the box on the floor, eyes closed, breathing through the mouth to keep herself stable. The black stopped swimming, after a while, and she plopped the box further down the line and climbed back up. There were plenty of clothes, but it was mostly things to layer, with windbreakers to put on top. She pulled each hanger towards her and held it in the light. If it looked promising she rubbed the sleeve between her paws to see if it’d hold against the wind. After a few minutes, she was nearing the end, breathing heavily, and she found something, a heavy, red-and-white checkered sweater with two little balls hanging from the collar. Good memories. She took a breath before pulling it off the hook and over herself.

When her head popped through, she saw the next item on the rack. It wasn’t in the light, but she could tell what it was by how it jutted out slightly in shadow. It was her training uniform. Judy hadn’t noticed before, but she was sweating hard. [Staring at the uniform, she could feel it run into her eyes, and sting.] There was a tear like a clawmark running down the left leg; she used to pretend it was a wound, and that this run was either the best run of her life, or the last, depending on how she did it. Something that wasn’t part of her anymore crawled under her skin. She felt like she was wearing a piece of stolen clothing. No matter what time it is there was a spotlight on her. She couldn’t look ahead, because she needed to keep her eyes cast over her shoulder, checking for a pursuer who no matter how many years later could always come, take what’s theirs,

and this one’d already come, it was in the holes in her arms and the tear on her suit, and they’d every right to consider her some sort of shitty joke that a clueless asshole felt the need to tell. She wasn’t that person anymore, because she quit, and she thought there’d be some other Judy behind there to fall back on after, but the longer it went on it seemed like she was just whiting out the script, letting the photograph sit in the sun until it was bled white.

She laced up her boots, killed the light and left.

\---

“…have made it abundantly clear that you will not change your behavoir. Judy Hopps, you are, as of 4:47 PM, the 23rd of March, dishonorably discharged from the Zootopian Police Department.”

\---

            The elevator was broken when I moved out. Somebody who thought they were handy had got it working, but they screwed it up, and I rode up to the sixth floor with a hole five-odd inches wide between the doors. It was oh so slow, but a little marten standing in the hallway on the third floor waved at me as I passed, which brightened things. I hope she saw me smile back. The cab ground to a stop. 632 was on the left, near the end of the hall, in a strange sort of alcove that the landlord couldn’t seem to explain. The blueprints suggested it was a way to cheat ventilation code, which in one of my finer moments got fifty dollars knocked off our rent. (Municipal work has its privileges.) I walked over to the door.

I waited outside a few moments to focus. This was my last shot.

I was wearing the shirt and tie I had on when I met her. I couldn’t find the pants, so I picked up a pair of the same color at a thrift store. They fit okay. I banked that remembering the good old days would do something for her. Maybe it’d just piss her off, maybe it’d make her think of something better, somebody better. Whatever worked was okay with me. She never liked other people nosing in and “helping”; I had to give her a path to follow. This was a sale, getting her to buy into her future, and I needed something on offer. So I dug into the past to find something she’d want to get to. I just worried I was lying. The good old days are over. I didn’t want to promise her something that isn’t coming back.

I knocked and stood straight, tried to put on the right face, show something like sympathy. She didn’t answer. I knocked again. I had seen the light on in her window. I waited a little while, to give her the time to waddle over and let me in. After a number of minutes waiting at the door, I’d had enough of feeling like an idiot, and just reached for the handle.

She’d left it unlocked, which, frankly, I expected. “Judy, it’s me.” I stepped in and shut the door behind. There was a floor lamp on, in the living room it looked like, and the light ast everything in the hall in a long shadow. I could smell the kitchen. The front closet was open, with a bunch of clothes in a heap coming out the gap. They were folded flat, like laundry, but shoved there in the gap anyway. On top was a shirt I liked to take her to the movies in. It had a white star on the front, and it would glitter and dance when it reflected the light on the screen.

I walked into the living room. She was laying on the couch, under a mountain of blankets, dead center in the room. Her eyes were open, but her face was ducked behind the edge of her bedding and I couldn’t read her expression. I could tell by her shoulders that her arms were folded behind her back. Pillows and beanbags dotted the floor with towels and blankets draped over them carelessly. They looked like the walls had bled some of their brown on them in the dark. Everything did. A coffee table was next to the couch, and on it sat her rig, mingling with dirty plates and random trash. She had been pulling herself against the arm of the couch for a while when I walked over to her.

Her voice came choked and rough. “What do you want from me?” She pulled her face in the open, already turned to me. Her eyes were sheets of black, and baggy underneath. She was frowning like she was in pain. Her nose had snot caked all across it, and it caked her fur leading down to her mouth. I could hear her breathe. She looked five years older than she was.

Standing there, I didn’t know what to call her.

“I want to fix things. Nothing on you.”

She stared.

 “Will you let me do your dishes? Talk a minute?”

She shook her head no, trying to keep her eyes open.

“I don’t want your help, Wilde.”

“There’s –“

“Get -” she choked on spittle, and covered her mouth with the blanket while she cleared her throat. “…Get the fuck out of my house.”

“You need help.”

“Why do you care all of a sudden?” Her voice was quieter, and it shifted midsentence from a growl to a cry. She was shaking.

“It’s not that I stopped –“

“Then why did you leave?”

…

“Because I didn’t love you anymore.”

…

She pulled her arms out from under the covers to wipe her eyes. They had tufts jetting out the inside crook, ragged bits of fluff arcing upwards, grouped around the elbow. I looked over to the table. Beneath everything else was a whiteout layer of little glassine bags, folded and torn, but the stamp always showing, making the table look like a house of cards that fell face up. There were a few used syringes along the far side. One she’d messed up the aspiration on and the needle and barrel had been coated with blood, which leaked back out onto the paper. There was more shit on the table, but that’s all it was, a mess, really.

She got up and started to waddle to the lamp. I moved over to give her a shoulder. She tried to push me away, but her arms didn’t have any force in them, and they folded pressing up against my body. I curled an arm underneath her shoulder, and walked her over. She nearly pitched over on a beanbag; I caught her by putting an arm out in front of her. She bent over it, wheezing, coughing up something awful for a few long seconds. Then she caught her wind, and I put my arm back under hers and took her the rest of the way. She steadied her breath and mumbled something before turning out the lamp.

The light through the window, especially at night, focused on the center. We walked out from the shadows, toward it, stepping over pillows and a discarded belt. The night sky gets dimmer every day in Zootopia; I looked out the window, and could only make out a few over the shimmer below. I let go of her arm at the couch, and she climbed back into the sheets then turned to face me. She’d stopped crying.

“Have you seen enough? ...

…is there some other cut you need to make?”

I walked out to the hallway. One last try.

“Judy?”

She didn’t answer. I could hear her shift on the couch.

“I pulled the rope. I just wanted it done quickly. Otherwise it’d never happen, we’d just hesitate the rest of our lives. I did it because something was different in me, and maybe in you, too, and we weren’t going to work anymore.” She stayed silent.

“What makes you so great is the drive in you. It’s more than energy, it’s more of a polestar, something beyond yourself and anybody else, that brings you to the center of things. I think one day you stopped following that star and started trying to be it instead. You had to be bright and constant, certain, unfailing. And when you were unable to keep up those standards things started to fall apart.”

It was strangely silent. No house noises, bump of the house furnace. I didn’t know how to tell her I cared.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. You are a great cop. You can still be. If you want help, just call, and I’ll be there.”

I shut the door and headed for the stairs.

\----

She called two nights later. I don’t know if what I did helped her, or just forced her hand somehow.

\----

The outpatient program was based in an older office building well over two miles away, but Judy liked to get there with her feet. It was coming back that took a toll. She shoved her hands in the shallow pockets of her vest, and headed down 14th. It was a cold May. Seemed like it was going to be a cold year. She weaved through fellow pedestrian traffic, trying to keep alongside other small animals to avoid any unintended collisions on the way.

Today was all about the walls you build up in yourself. The counselor kept saying that the walls were these artificial things that come with the drugs – fears that you’re perverted, that you can’t change, that you won’t be able to trust and love people like you used to -- you just invented them. They were speculation on the person you didn’t know anymore and with some self-reflection, these walls would disappear, and you could find your way again. Judy asked about solving the problems you had with the world, and he just said that without drugs, the world would seem like a better place, and you wouldn’t worry about it much.

Nick was waiting for her at a coffee shop that gave every sign and cue as to be unpretentious, which seemed to correlate, bizarrely enough, with absurd prices. It was nearby, which is what mattered. He had already gotten her standard latte, and was sitting on one of the patio tables, scanning the crowd. She had just enough time to put on a smile before he saw her. He waved, she returned the gesture, and after a little greeting they both sipped quietly, eyes apart.

Nick moved first. “How many sessions d’ya got left?”

“I think eight. It’s a long program.”

“You been doing okay?”

“My arms don’t itch as much.  Everything afloat in Juvenile Division?”

“We had a string of burglaries in Vornoy Plaza, high-value targets. The prime suspect that RSS had been following turned out to be innocent; the perp was instead a fifteen-year-old with a background of narcissistic behavior and poverty. It got plenty of notice back at the office; Brass take us more seriously now.”

“Great!”

A slight fog had started to come in, a frequent problem near Tundratown. Judy looked around her and saw, more than anything else, the shapes of things: the window into the shop was nearly a perfect square, long thin sticks making up the wholly decorative fence between the patio and the sidewalk, the circular manhole cover in the street, the triangle of Nick’s face. She looked for Nick in it for a few seconds, then figured that even if she found him, he wasn’t looking for her anymore.

He brought things back in. “Do you plan on trying to rejoin the force?”

“I can’t go back.”

Nick thought about what it meant to take your own advice. He wanted something comforting to come to his head, but nothing relevant, just cheap apologies better left unsaid. They let their cups run out before they spoke again.

“I’ve pretty much killed this drink, Nick, so I’m going to head out.”

“Always quick to the punch.” He meant to encourage her. “Catch you later, C..” he caught himself, “…Hopps.”

She stepped out onto the sidewalk, and tried to see through the fog to the next gap to run through.


End file.
